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Thursday, August 20, 2015

Negotiating With Wedding Vendors

With the average cost of a wedding reaching a staggering $28,000, many couples are looking for any way to save money when it comes to their weddings. One way in which couples can do this, yet remains underutilized and to some extent unknown, is through negotiating with the various wedding vendors they encounter and work with for the ceremony and reception. When negotiating with vendors it is important to maintain positive relations with the business so you don’t risk losing their goodwill while still keeping your end goal in mind. Here are some helpful tips for negotiating with wedding vendors to help keep your wedding costs within your desired budget.

1. Compare Prices: When beginning to plan your wedding and negotiate with vendors, it’s important to have a clear idea of prices for various wedding related services and goods. Start by conducting thorough research of pricing for wedding vendors and their services in your your market area. A great resource to assist you in this is www.costofwedding.com, which can provide you with the average cost of weddings and the individual breakdown of various products and services associated with weddings in your area and can give you a more realistic idea of how to establish your budget, thus giving you a great starting place for negotiations with vendors as you begin making initial connections.

2. Be Honest With Your Budget: Most wedding vendors, be it florists, DJs, wedding planners, or reception venues, have experience working with couples who have a variety of different budgets and know exactly how to make their services fit the needs of budgets of all sizes. By being honest with vendors about your budget and what you feel comfortable paying for will help establish grounds for negotiations and allow for more open conversations about any discounts they can apply or fees they can potentially waive to accommodate your budget. The worst case scenario with being honest with your spending limits is the vendor’s unwillingness or inability to work with you, and in that case you’ll know you need to set your sights on another vendor.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for What You Want: When purchasing other big ticket items such as vehicles or homes, people aren’t afraid to be direct and ask for exactly what they want, yet when it comes to establishing contracts with wedding vendors, people are often afraid to ask for what they want. This could be for fear of offending the business or simply because they are uninformed about what is acceptable to ask for. If you have conducted your research and know what’s within the acceptable realm of pricing, there is nothing wrong with simply asking for what you want. Many vendors are happy to price match competitors’ pricing, establish unique packages with special pricing, or work with you in other ways to achieve customer satisfaction.

4. Be Flexible: Remember that negotiating doesn’t just mean the vendor will move to accommodate your needs. You’ll have to remain flexible in order to reach a compromise in some aspects to get what you want. This might mean changing your established wedding date, season, venue, or more. With that in mind, these changes might be insignificant when compared to the amount of savings you’ll encounter by doing so.

4. Pay in Full: Paying in full might seem like counter intuitive advice when thinking about saving money on your wedding, but this can be great leverage for negotiations. Offering to pay in full for the services rendered rather than by deposit or payments can sweeten the deal for the vendors and make negotiating with you more enticing.

For Atlanta wedding flowers, brides needn’t look further than Atlanta floristPeachtree Petals. Peachtree Petals has extensive experience with couples working to ensure their wedding day is exactly as they envision and well within their established budget. Area bride, Sarah, had this to say of her choice to use Peachtree Petals for her wedding flowers:

"I only looked at two different flower vendors, and requested the same amount of flowers from each (bouquet for the bride, bouquets for 7 bridesmaids, boutonnieres for the groom, groomsmen and pastor). The bids came back pretty drastically different and Peachtree Petals was by far the more reasonable option. To be honest, I kind of think I was getting better/nicer/more flowers through Peachtree Petals than through the other florist I spoke with. They also added in a toss bouquet and a cake topper! They were respectful and wonderful to work with. The flowers were beautiful and I couldn't have been any happier with the beautiful bouquets."